magazine, Shamlou expressed his dissatisfaction with existing Persian translations of the novels Virgin Soil Upturned and Sholokhov’s And Quiet Flows the Don, the latter of which Shamlou later translated, satisfying the poet’s love for the novel and the epic. Shamlou posed the question as to whether social commitment alone sufficed for literary workers, and whether that commitment could override a broader commitment to literature and language. He questioned whether a subpar translation—be it through sheer neglect, the absence of knowledge, or linguistic weakness—was excusable if the literary worker creating it was socially committed.
On July 30, 2010, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the poet’s passing, Faraj Sarkoohi writes in a BBC Persian online article that Shamlou rejected the approach of word by word, phrase by phrase, and in the case of poetry, verse by verse translation, arguing that the translation of poetry, as opposed to prose, hinged on the strength of the internal music and language of the rendition. The only option was the re-recitation of a poem in the target language. Poetry was to be translated in the obliteration and re-creation anew in language.
While Shamlou was inventive and literary in his translation output, he was neither always accurate—looking up terms in reference books and sometimes translating word by word—nor was he, by his own admission, always faithful, believing instead that the translator had to edit in the interest of the final work and its audience, lest the work be suspended in some linguistic and cultural limbo. In the documentary The Final Word, Shamlou mentioned his intervening in the translation of a short story by Kafka, whose language he found complex and in need of some kneading into Persian. Essentially, in his practice, Shamlou broadened the notion of “faithful” in translation, prioritizing artfulness and accessibility in the new language over a strict adherence to words in the original.
But Shamlou also thought that translation could at most transmit meaning, images, ideas, imaginary figments, that language and the internal music of a poem was lost in translation. In other words, what was lost in the translation of poetry was poetry. Did he think this applied to himself as a poet or as a translator, or both? These comments coming from a writer who translated a vast body of international literature reveal Shamlou’s quite complex relationship with translation.
Shamlou was arrested and held as a political prisoner just after the 1953 coup d’état orchestrated by the United Kingdom under the name “Operation Boot” and the United States under the name “Operation Ajax.” Political prisons were packed with people from all strata of society in close quarters. University professors, farmers, merchants, and laborers were eating together, commiserating, exchanging ideas. Away from home, desperate to forget their surroundings, they came together, told stories, recited poetry, hummed songs together. Early among these songs was a lullaby Shamlou composed, “Laalaa’i,” a folkloric song gathered and edited by him, a practice he would continue to masterful levels for the rest of his life. This poem of resistance circulated, filled prisoners up with hope and the zeal to fight.
Laa laai laai lai laai lai, little rosebud
your daddy’s gone, my heart is blood
Laa laai laai, your daddy’s not coming home tonight
maybe they’ve taken your daddy, laa laai laai
Laa laai laai lai laai lai, little iron bud
the enemy killed your daddy
Laa laai laai, this is the enemy’s mark
hands soaked with blood, laa laai laai
sleep peacefully in your cradle tonight, laa laai laai
like fire in ashes, laa laai laai
tomorrow you’ll ignite
avenging daddy’s blood, laa laai laai…
In his estimation of his own work, Shamlou’s first serious volume of poetry was Fresh Air (1956), the publication of which was an event in Iranian poetics, largely inspired by Paul Éluard’s poem, “Air Vif,” from his 1951 volume, Le Phénix, which Shamlou translated and published under the title “Fresh Air” in 1955:
I looked before me
I saw you in the crowd
I saw you among the wheat
I saw you under a tree
At the end of my journeys
In the depths of my torment
At the corner of every smile
Emerging from water and fire
I saw you summer and winter
I saw you throughout my house
I saw you in my arms
I saw you in my dreams
I will never leave you.
Shamlou’s poem, “Collective Love,” from his volume, Fresh Air, is especially reminiscent of Éluard’s “Air Vif.”
In 1954, when Shamlou was making his young mark on poetry and struggling to break with tradition, he composed one of his most well-known poems, “Poetry That is Life,” while imprisoned, witnessing poets and activists tortured and executed. The long poem is considered his version of Archibald MacLeish’s poem, “Ars Poetica,” a poem about what a poem should be, which ends with, “A poem should not mean/But be.”
Shamlou echoes this sentiment in “Poetry That is Life.” In the poem, a poet breaks out into the streets declaring to “everyman” that his poetry is for and about them, not the irrelevant subjects of the past.
The subject matter of poetry
from past poets was not life.
...
The subject of poetry
today
is a different matter…
Today
poetry
is the weapon of the masses
because poets are themselves
one branch from the forest of the masses,
not jasmines and hyacinths from so-and-so’s greenhouse.
Shamlou’s call to arms served as a manifesto of the new emancipatory poetics in which, following the prescription of his mentor, Nima, a poet must embody the essence of his or her time through an expression
